Danish television drama is to abandon its successful formula of strong female leads and focus on men with a batch of new series which feature themes of finance, fraud and fighting.

Piv Bernth, executive producer of The Killing – the third and final 10-part series comes to British screens next weekend – has been promoted to head of fiction at broadcaster Danish Radio and says it is time to give men a turn in the spotlight. She said the way forward would be to "look at what was happening to them while the women were doing all these things, saving the world", and create leading parts for them.

One answer, she said, seemed to be that they were making money. Danish Radio is developing a fresh 20-episode drama called Follow the Money, "about financial fraud around the world, about finance and economics".

"That's for a male lead. We think now we have to change. It will be on air in 2015. We like to tell big stories for the small screen. In the opening episode we will be in London, for a short while. If you ask Danes, they have been very affected by the closing of companies, high unemployment, the financial crisis; I think the Danes will associate with it. Where you have fraud, of course you will have murder! We will have new male leads, you will see new faces."

The broadcaster is also set to screen a historical drama, called 1864, in autumn of 2014 to mark the 150th anniversary of the brutal national, character-forming battle of Dybbøl in which Denmark lost territory to Prussian invaders. This will have two male leads, teenage brothers going to war and losing their innocence.

Another series in production is The Legacy, about four siblings coping with growing up as children of the permissive 1968 generation.

Speaking to an audience of British fans at a special screening of the next series of The Killing, Bernth said: "I think you should appreciate the courage to stop."

That courage was only too evident as Sofie Gråbøl, whose depiction of enigmatic detective Sarah Lund is key to the series' success, was greeted with a roar of approval and clapping as she entered the event. As the host, Danish ambassador to Britain Anne Hedensted Steffensen, noted: "She is Danish screen royalty."

Gråbøl, in a slinky gold top, leather jacket and tight jeans, said the end of filming had come as a shock. "It hit me like a hammer when I finished [The Killing]; it was an emotional series for me." She added that in the very last scene, filmed in September, "I was in my own little world, in a car, when the director said, 'that's a wrap'". Bernth was standing outside, with a bottle of champagne. "I opened the door, grabbed the bottle, and ran off. I cried all the way home ... I kept the jumper."

Soren Sveistrup, the writer and creator of The Killing, who has introduced a more domestic and world-weary side to Lund in the final series, as well as a natty sweater with a simple v-shaped pattern, said he is having a break before deciding what to do next. "We could have made 1,000 episodes about Sarah Lund, but they would not be very good. Television today is not about quality, only entertainment. TV stinks. When I started writing for television it talked down to you, it was about, say, hospitals, good-looking doctors, you know the recipe. If something becomes a success, it gets too big for itself. It is very, very important to move on."

That applies to Gråbøl, too, since Danish Radio currently has nothing planned for her, despite The Killing being watched by 30% of Denmark's population. "We are melancholy, it's like a divorce. We have been together, working together, since 2001," said Bernth.

Gråbøl, who has just starred as a priest in a film, The Hour of the Lynx, only partly agreed: "I am sad and relieved. Like being divorced. I remember it from my real divorce, that mixture of sadness and relief. The Killing was challenging, fun, hard work. The pace has been insane."